Under Western Eyes eBook

“No,” I said gravely, if with a smile,
“you cannot be expected to understand.”

His clean-shaven lip quivered ever so little before
he said, as if wickedly amused—­

“But haven’t you heard just now?
I was thanked by that young lady for understanding
so well.”

I looked at him rather hard. Was there a hidden
and inexplicable sneer in this retort? No.
It was not that. It might have been resentment.
Yes. But what had he to resent? He looked
as though he had not slept very well of late.
I could almost feel on me the weight of his unrefreshed,
motionless stare, the stare of a man who lies unwinking
in the dark, angrily passive in the toils of disastrous
thoughts. Now, when I know how true it was, I
can honestly affirm that this was the effect he produced
on me. It was painful in a curiously indefinite
way—­for, of course, the definition comes
to me now while I sit writing in the fullness of my
knowledge. But this is what the effect was at
that time of absolute ignorance. This new sort
of uneasiness which he seemed to be forcing upon me
I attempted to put down by assuming a conversational,
easy familiarity.

“That extremely charming and essentially admirable
young girl (I am—­as you see—­old
enough to be frank in my expressions) was referring
to her own feelings. Surely you must have understood
that much?”

He made such a brusque movement that he even tottered
a little.

“Must understand this! Not expected to
understand that! I may have other things to do.
And the girl is charming and admirable. Well—­and
if she is! I suppose I can see that for myself.”

This sally would have been insulting if his voice
had not been practically extinct, dried up in his
throat; and the rustling effort of his speech too
painful to give real offence.

I remained silent, checked between the obvious fact
and the subtle impression. It was open to me
to leave him there and then; but the sense of having
been entrusted with a mission, the suggestion of Miss
Haldin’s last glance, was strong upon me.
After a moment of reflection I said—­

“Shall we walk together a little?”

He shrugged his shoulders so violently that he tottered
again. I saw it out of the corner of my eye as
I moved on, with him at my elbow. He had fallen
back a little and was practically out of my sight,
unless I turned my head to look at him. I did
not wish to indispose him still further by an appearance
of marked curiosity. It might have been distasteful
to such a young and secret refugee from under the
pestilential shadow hiding the true, kindly face of
his land. And the shadow, the attendant of his
countrymen, stretching across the middle of Europe,
was lying on him too, darkening his figure to my mental
vision. “Without doubt,” I said to
myself, “he seems a sombre, even a desperate
revolutionist; but he is young, he may be unselfish
and humane, capable of compassion, of....”